My thoughts on various operating systems and how they rate for protecting your privacy


Desktop

Qubes OS

Qubes OS

Linux Mint


Mobiles

GrapheneOS

GrapheneOS is a version of Android that contains NO telemetry, and has all the Google code removed. You can optionally install Google Play Services on Graphene if you want, and it will run as a sandboxed app that can’t access other data. This is different to stock Android, where the Google Play Services app has privileged access to the device and can “see” everything on it. In my opinion GrapheneOS is the best mobile OS for privacy

iOS

iOS is not as private as Graphene but is much better out of the box than stock Android in that regard. iOS does send some telemetry to Apple but you can disable a lot of it

Stock Android

The normal Android OS is terrible for privacy. Google track and profile just about every action a user takes on Android. The Google Play Services app cannot be properly removed, and it has a special privileged access which lets it see everything on the phone and is constantly collecting data and transmitting it back to Google